


if our atoms collided (what would their impact be?)

by narglesmademedoit



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe- Shakespeare actors, Alternate Universe- Titanic, Based on a Tumblr Post, Episode: s01e09 Girl Meets 1961, F/M, Post-Canon, Soulmates, i can't believe i nearly forgot to tag that, i did exactly 0 hours research for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25807357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narglesmademedoit/pseuds/narglesmademedoit
Summary: Before the creation of the universe, soulmates existed in the form of atoms, close enough to touch. The creation of the universe flung these atoms across it, and they spend every day attempting to return to each other's side once again.Or, 5 times Riley and Farkle's atoms come close enough to touch, and one time they actually do.
Relationships: Riley Matthews/Farkle Minkus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	1. Fae universe

**Author's Note:**

> Based on saddeer's tumblr post: "I have this weird theory that some people are drawn to each other because their atoms were near each other when the universe was created and over time the same atoms keep coming back together."

Farkle falls in love with Riley the first time their atoms come close enough to feel each other’s charge. It is a time that the final versions of themselves will look back on as a story and nothing more, a time where their story will not be remembered. It is a time of dragons and fairies, of knights who fight with a sorcerer at their side, of Farkle making potions in the corner of the room whilst he watches Riley create magic as she breathes and tries to convince himself that it is only this that draws him to her.

Farkle’s spells come out static and stiff, performing the job and disappearing without a trace. But Riley- Riley is a magic all of her own. Magic comes naturally to her, flows from her fingertips and takes on a life of its own. Her spells remain long after she is gone, twist and crackle in the still air and colour it pastel and fluorescent.

He asks her once, when they are sheltering from the rain in a tiny hidden cave where Riley practices her magic (and isn’t it a world away from the cold, oversized laboratory where Farkle measures crushed herbs and dragon tongue in precise amounts), how she feels so comfortable knowing that her magic flows away from her out of her control.

“It’s not out of control,” she tells him, all big eyes and earnest expression. “It still listens. You just have to listen to it as well.”

The words mean nothing to Farkle, but he writes them down anyway.

*

The peace they have found together is soon shattered by the invasion from their neighbours and the subsequent declaration of war. The kingdom has spent so long in peace that they find themselves hopelessly ill-prepared and outnumbered, even with the aid of sorcerers-in-training such as Farkle.

He does what he can, producing half-formed healing potions and explosives at a rate he had thought impossible, but as the war rages on and food, supplies, knights become scarcer, the King grows increasingly desperate. Farkle returns one evening to find a message from the King and a furious Riley sat at his table.

“Have you heard what they’re doing?”

Riley is up and yelling before he even has the chance to close the door, brandishing the parchment in one hand, the air around her steadily crackling. “ _As a result of the ongoing conflict, all fae are required to report to the King’s Court tomorrow morning and volunteer their services for our army,_ ” she reads. “They’re acting like we’re dispensable weapons, not our own people! They haven’t even _tried_ to negotiate some form of peaceful end to the war, they’re just expecting the fae to do the job for them, like always, and I’m sick of it!”

The edges of the parchment begin to smoke and Farkle quickly takes it out of her hands before she sets his laboratory on fire. The anger seems to drain out of Riley. She slumps against Farkle, who wraps his arms around her, resting his head on top of hers.

“I’m just so tired of being an object, Farkle,” Riley murmurs, her face hidden from view in his neck, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her sound so empty before. He tightens his grip on her, the only comfort he can find to give as he wonders how Riley will be able to escape the draft.

*

Riley is far more determined and resourceful than he imagined, which is what Farkle discovers the next morning when he opens his windows to discover that Riley has organised a protest demanding peace and equal political status of the fae overnight.

The street is filled with fae, townsfolk, even fellow sorcerers, all stood waving placards and chanting for justice. Farkle takes a moment to stare at Riley at its head- the square of her shoulders, the absolute determination on her face- and is suddenly overwhelmed with a genuine affection for her that he can no longer ignore as an admiration for her magic. He turns away from the windows to find his boots, and is startled out of his thoughts by the sound of yelling and arrow-fire on the ground below.

He races back to the window to see the King’s knights firing arrows into the crowd to break up the protest, spraying blood and scattering bodies across their own streets and Riley is- Riley is- Riley is only visible if he leans out the corner of the window-frame, a pair of knights dragging her into a carriage, and Farkle races down the stairs without a second thought.

The carriage is already a rapidly shrinking dot in the distance by the time he reaches the street and Farkle chases after it against all instinct and reasoning he has relied upon all his life, follows the carriage and Riley all the way to the King’s castle. With no sign of her other than the empty carriage, he enters the castle, frantically attempting to open each door he comes across. He is desperate, and this should make him faster, but he is still too late by the time he finds her.

She is half-conscious, strapped to a table with a flat piece of metal wrapped around her forehead connecting to what Farkle realises is the still-experimental extraction machine. Two superior sorcerers stand peering over her, observing her the way they would an ill-behaving potion or particularly interesting specimen.

He should try to reason with his fellow sorcerers, explain to them that extracting Riley’s magic will not win them the war because it is a part of her, a part that will never co-operate with the people who separate them. He should beg them to find a peaceful alternative to the almost-certain destruction, should run in and pull Riley off the table, flee with her to freedom.

He screams her name instead, stuck gaping in the doorway, and the elder sorcerer pulls the lever down and there is an awful burning smell and the candles in the room are growing and shrinking and flickering endlessly and Riley is screaming, one long noise above everything else, and a blinding white light bursts from her chest, fills the room and snuffs out the candles and shatters the windows and Riley is still _screaming_ and then-

Silence.

The light dissipates from the room, leaving two dead sorcerers, a collapsed table cracked down the centre, and no Riley.

*

She slips through his fingertips and try as he might, he can no longer find her in her cave, the forest, any of the places she used to spread her light. Eventually he stops searching for Riley and begins to wonder how he could bring her back instead.

He thinks of her magic, of light behind eyes and air that gleams with all the colours of the rainbow, and Farkle does what he does best and sets about trying to understand it.

He ends up with a slice of magic contained in a bottle, twisting and spinning behind glass. It is a poor copy of what Riley creates, a failed replica, but he thinks (in some ways he knows) that she will appreciate the effort that it took.

Farkle takes the bottle to a clearing, a tiny untouched circle of the forest where Riley would make flowers bloom just by touching them. He places it in the centre, uncorks the top and steps away, wanders back behind one of the trees to wait.

The magic pauses for a moment once the lid is removed, as though it is wondering what to make of its newfound freedom. Then it begins to float out of the bottle, slowly at first as though it were flowing through treacle, and then faster, blowing pastel rings into the still air.

There is a moment of eerie calm that descends upon the clearing once the bottle is empty. It tilts for a second, then topples onto the grass with a barely audible clink. The silence hanging in the clearing remains a second more, then dissolves away, replaced with the faint sound of wind blowing through the leaves in the still night air.

A sweep of pastel forms just outside the corner of Farkle’s eye and he steps away from the forest to meet it. It is a swirling mass, collecting not just the artificial magic he released but flower petals, fallen leaves, an amalgamation of the natural Riley loved and Farkle’s artificial attempts to reach her.

The mass is no longer twisting, Farkle notices as he takes another step towards it. It has steadied, begun to take on the form of a young girl, with long dark hair crowned with flowers and eyes lit up from within. She is hovering slightly above the grass, her outline slightly blurred, some being not of this realm, but when she catches sight of Farkle and smiles at him, it is so unmistakeably Riley that the knowledge fills every cell in his body.

He wants to say something, anything to hear her voice again after weeks of silence, but whatever words he would have produced stick in his throat. She speaks instead, breathes his name and glide ever closer, the grass brushed aside under her feet.

It feels, in some strange way that he has never understood, like there is some cord extending from his sternum to Riley’s, intangible and visible only to them. He feels it tug and obediently takes another step forward, matched by Riley, and the air around them seems to thicken, the electricity he had created encircling the pair.

They stay like that for a minute, content to let this pulsing energy build as they take in the image of each other, desperate and hopeful and backlit by the waning sunlight. Then Farkle reaches a hand forward, through air now so thick he feels himself push it aside, to cup her face and sweep her hair behind her ear, and Riley closes her eyes and slightly, ever so slightly, leans forward to meet him.

Farkle’s hand finds her face, but instead of the warm skin he was expecting, he feels a cold that seeps into every individual bone of his hand. He starts, ever so slightly, at the sensation and in that moment Riley has opened her eyes again and pulled back and she looks so _hurt_ and-

And she is fading before his eyes. He takes another step back, arm falling to hang by his side, watches unthinkingly as Riley’s features blur, the slope of her nose and curls of her eyelashes losing their definition.

She opens her mouth again but no sound comes out. An almost numb terror spreads across her face as she fades faster. Her feet begin to dissolve in the air, pastel smoke rising in their place. The smoke continues to rise, stealing its silent host, wrapping around her chest and climbing up her spine. It is not until the mass is wrapped around her throat that the barrier to her voice finally breaks, releasing a strangled scream that rocks the clearing and makes Farkle’s ears ring. The mass burrows into her eyes, takes hold of her mouth, and just like that she is gone again.

Flower-petaled smoke drifts lazily into the sky, nonchalant to the destruction taking place below, the echo of a scream, but Farkle pays it no attention. He leans down and picks up the discarded bottle that has rolled to rest at his feet. He runs a finger over the swooping letters decorating the faded label, whispers her name to himself, his voice found just as hers is snatched away forever.

He was a fool to think that he was alone before. That wasn’t alone. This, this unbearable emptiness as he stares down an increasingly unfamiliar world- this is alone.


	2. Shakespeare actor au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> historical accuracy? I don't know her

It surprises everyone, when Farkle is selected to join the theatre company.

He had spent his childhood with a no-nonsense mother and a father at the heart of the growing scientific investigations and understanding of witchcraft, taught from birth that the key to life was found in the corners of the library, the spaces between evidence and conclusions. But then his father, on the rare nights he was home, would sit beside Farkle and tell him of his own attempts to reach the stage, and alongside his father’s half-hidden bitterness at recounting his one failure, Farkle would hear a genuine joy for losing yourself within someone else, of saying and doing greater things than you could achieve as yourself, and the hopeless romantic within him thought _I want that_.

It is not an easy journey. Alongside his father’s intelligence, he also inherited his near-pathological inability to act. The first few times his renditions of Shakespeare’s tragic soliloquies get him laughed offstage would serve as a deterrent to any other actor, but his mother’s fierce determination rests in his bones as well, so instead Farkle keeps trying, keeps pushing until he falls into comic roles instead, where his ill-placed emphasis and exaggerated facial expressions are seen as a strength instead of a joke.

He gains a place at a small touring theatre company, performing _Romeo and Juliet_ several years after its original run has ended in the hopes that audiences will still pay to see plays they have seen before. It’s not the main role (which goes to handsome, perfect Lucas who never forgets a line) or even greatest comic role (which scatty, careless Zay takes on as easily as breathing), but it’s the first step in his dream, and Lucas and Zay form an odd friendship with him, and well. It’s a start.

*

They begin in the North, performing to half-filled theatres in York and Lancaster and hoping that they’ll sell enough tickets to keep the company afloat. It’s not perfect- Farkle is certain that both he and Zay invent their own lines during one show, and in the next a prop failure causes Juliet to stab herself with an imaginary dagger, but it’s everything Farkle could have hoped for.

It’s sixth months before the show finally descends to London, with the plan to perform for two weeks before moving onwards towards Oxford. They arrive only a few hours before their first performance and immediately forced into unloading equipment and costumes for the following weeks. Farkle is still half-asleep by the time the opening scene arrives, silently praying that he won’t miss a line or fall asleep onstage, or that if he does, he at least hits his head hard enough on the stage that he never has to wake up and face the consequences.

He stumbles through his lines as best as he remembers, trying to repeat the same gestures that earned him laughs in previous cities with only half the brainpower to back them up.

“Is the law of our side if I say ay?” he mock-whispers to his stage partner, leaning in far enough that their noses almost touch.

“No,” his partner replies in the same voice, and there is a sudden burst of laughter that pulls Farkle out of his sleep-deprived daze.

He looks to the source of the laughter to see a dark-haired girl around his age attempting to hold back her laughter, poking the blonde girl next to her throughout the blonde’s attempts to quiet her friend. Farkle catches her eye, feeling his own smile mirror hers, and feels something in his chest not unlike the first time his father described acting to him.

He continues the scene, energy suddenly returning despite his growing distraction. Every opportunity he gets, he tries to catch the girl’s eye again, and each time it works feels like a greater achievement than the last. By the time he takes the stage for the closing bows, his face aches from the effort of holding back smiles during serious scenes and he wants nothing more than to run into the audience and introduce himself. Before he can, however, Zay is shouting in his ear and the director wants to talk about their performance, and by the time Farkle has finally managed to free himself, the theatre is empty.

It’s a shame. He would’ve liked getting to know her.

*

Farkle is midway through performing the first scene the next day when the quiet of the theatre is suddenly interrupted by the same bright shout of laughter as before. Farkle’s head whips round to see that the dark-haired girl has returned, and he can’t fight the smile when she gives him a small wave. Once more he takes any opportunity he can to catch a glimpse of her, steadily caring less and less about whether the audience notice his distraction. He sneaks glimpses of her through the curtain when he’s offstage, memorising the shape of her lips, how her head tilts slightly when she hears a line she likes. He scans the audience for her during the bows, feeling strangely disappointed to see two empty seats where she and her friend had sat, the introduction he had been planning dying on his tongue.

It becomes a routine, the first he has had since joining a travelling company. The dark-haired girl and her friend come to every performance and disappear before the bows, and Farkle feels more drawn to her every time he catches a glimpse. The rational part of his brain can’t make sense of it- he has never spoken to this girl, doesn’t even know her name, but then he spots her mouthing along to his lines, her friend rolling her eyes fondly, and his chest grows warm and he feels himself fall further for her despite everything.

*

The day before their final performance, Farkle manages to catch her blonde friend before she leaves.

“Hey, you’re the weird one Riley won’t stop talking about,” she says instead of an actual greeting.

Farkle wants to ask what Riley says about him, where she’s from, why she never stays so that they can talk. “Her name’s Riley?” he asks breathlessly instead, because his brain seems to fail him every time he thinks of her, and right now is only focused on the fact that he finally knows her name.

The girl rolls her eyes at him, less fondly than she’s been doing to Riley. “That’s what I said. God, you two idiots were made for each other. Do you want me to make it a bit clearer?” She leans in close to him, her voice as loud and slow as possible. “Her. Name. Is. Riley. And. She. Wants. To. Kiss. You.”

Usually the condescending tone would irritate Farkle, but he’s instead somewhat giddy from learning that Riley is as interested as he is, enough that he doesn’t hear Lucas approach until he’s standing next to him.

“You okay, Farkle?” he asks. Farkle has enough remaining sense to nod dumbly before returning to his loved-up drift. Lucas (the traitor) laughs at him before turning back to the girl. “What did you do, congratulate him on his acting? Cause it seems like whatever you said left quite an impression on him, Miss…?”

“Maya,” she fills in. “And no, I was actually talking to him on behalf of my friend, so rather than standing there waiting for a congratulations that’s not coming, could you do us both a favour and just-” She makes a shooing gesture at him, which Lucas laughs at but swiftly obeys.

“So, I take it from your dumb expression that you like Riley too?” Maya deadpans.

“Yes, yep, a lot,” Farkle says quickly. “Hey, um, would you be able to give her this?” He hands Maya the note he wrote after his third performance, which she immediately opens and starts reading with a simple explanation of _we have no secrets_. “It’s, uh, just asking her to meet me out here at midnight so we can finally talk.”

“A late-night meet, _alone_ , with a girl you’ve never met? And I thought I was the deviant in this city.” Maya’s leans closer to him, her voice taking on an air of conspiracy. “You know, she’s usually a stickler to the rules and her curfew, a real good kid, but I reckon I’ve corrupted her enough and you’ve interested her enough for her to give it a try.”

She winks at him and starts to walk out of the theatre.

“You really think she’ll want to do this?” Farkle shouts at her retreating back, the reality of the situation suddenly dawning and leaving him more anxious than before.

Maya turns around, leaning against the doorway of the exit. “She snuck in here every night to see you, didn’t she?”

*

Farkle waits two hours outside the theatre that night before he realises that Riley isn’t coming. He goes home cold and miserable and unexpectedly lonely, the kind that even Lucas and Zay’s gentle gestures of friendship can’t disperse.

His heart sinks further at the theatre that night when he sees that both her and Maya’s seats are empty. He didn’t realise, until this moment, how used he had gotten to seeing them there, how good it had made him feel. He performs with about half the effort of previous shows, barely finding the energy to pretend to laugh and joke, and can’t bring himself to care about the fury the director will unleash upon him after the show.

The show ends too quickly, and suddenly Farkle is bowing, still trying to spot Riley and Maya, and then boxes are being forced into his hands, haphazardly stuffed full of equipment and he is loading them up into the carriages and he wants to tell the director, the cast, that he can’t be packing up to leave because Riley is still in London and he needs to talk to her, just once, to try to explain these feelings he has for her, but his mouth isn’t working and his body is moving regardless of what his heart wants.

Farkle drifts onto a carriage in his daze, finding himself pressed against the window, watching the image of London grow smaller in the distance as the ache inside of him grows unendingly stronger. _This is stupid_ , the rational part of his brain reminds him. _You never even spoke to her. It’s not like you were ever anything special_.

 _No,_ his heart agrees. _But we could have been something._

(Riley arrives at the theatre the next morning, a thousand apologies in her mind.

Her brother had taken ill suddenly on the night Maya gave her the note and she couldn’t leave him, not whilst he was miserable and searching for her affection. She’s found herself drawn to him ever since that first night at the theatre, and although they’ve never spoken something about him just feels _right_ , and she wants, more than anything, to talk to him, to give a relationship between them a try.

But instead she finds an empty theatre and no Farkle and an odd, quiet sadness for what nearly was.)


	3. Arranged marriage au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: watches girl meets yearbook and the jim and pam scenes from casino night back-to-back  
> my brain: nice

He is not meant to love her, the next time their atoms meet, and he thinks that this is precisely why they do.

By the time they meet they are both already engaged to someone else. Riley is to marry the Friar’s heir, solid and steady as anything, whilst Farkle’s parents had matched him to Isadora, with a love of science and competitive streak to match his own. He enjoys their chatter, how Isadora is never afraid to call him out, and he knows how much Riley and Lucas adore one another. So how Riley and Farkle feel about one another- the sudden attraction they felt when their parents, old school friends reunited by chance, introduced them- is unquestionably wrong.

It’s the most right he’s ever felt.

There’s no obvious reason for him to feel this way when they first meet. She’s obviously kind and he doesn’t dislike talking to her, but she doesn’t have any of the confidence or blunt honesty he admires so much in Isadora. Besides, from the dreamy expression on Riley’s face when she discusses Lucas’s love for their rabbits and his patience in guiding her through caring for them, not to mention the strange and not quite human noises she makes when someone brings up his face, Farkle thinks it’s safe to assume that she doesn’t feel any real attraction towards him either.

*

Two weeks later he spots her sitting on a park bench, and he’s walking towards her and calling out her name before he even realises what he’s doing.

She jumps at his shout with enough force that the book in her hands goes flying across the grass. He bends down to grab the book without realising that she’s already started to do the same thing, and the smack heads with enough force to create stars behind Farkle’s eyes. The ringing in his ears picks up as black spots grow over his vision, and he must pass out (stupid cliché fainting spells) because by the time they die down he’s flat on his back and Riley is mumbling to herself about clumsiness and manslaughter.

“’m okay,” he murmurs, awkwardly patting her knee. She heaves a sigh of relief.

“Okay, that’s good,” she says. “Because I know Maya said that she’d always help me bury a body but I’m not sure whether she was joking and also she’s away right now so she wouldn’t be able to help, which means that I’d have to ask someone else to help and even if they agreed I’d always know that I was the one who killed you and I’d just spend the rest of my life feeling guilty about it, so you being okay is really the best situation.”

The overwhelming urge to find out more about this Maya hits Farkle just before his brain reminds him that if she’s as adept at hiding bodies as she seems, it’s probably in his best interest to know as little about her as possible. Plausible deniability and all that.

Instead he pushes himself into a sitting position and leans his back against the bench. “Always happy to help,” he jokes.

Riley leans back against the bench as well, turning to look him in the eyes. “I mean, I can’t lie to my parents so I’d actually only feel guilty for about ten minutes, so you’re not as great a help as you think.”

“Hey!” Then, “Ten minutes?”

“Yeah, I live about ten minutes that way. The white house in the distance, the one with the big windows.”

“Seriously?” he laughs. “I live around the corner.”

Riley laughs as well. “And I was told that it was a big world out there.”

“Smaller than you think,” Farkle agrees.

*

The bench becomes their unofficial meeting place, in early mornings and late afternoons and late one night when his parents’ arguments go on too long to bear. Their meetings, more frequent as the months go on, are never planned. He just always knows, somehow, that Riley will be waiting on the bench when he gets there, or steadily approaching. It’s miles away from the rigid planning of his meetings with Isadora, and yet just as important.

They sit for hours, just talking, understanding that whatever they say is confidential, part of the glamour of the bench. They bring each other gifts sometimes, a soft square filled with lavender, a marbled rock Riley thought he would find interesting. Once a butterfly lands on Riley’s skirt, and the look of wonder on her face suddenly engulfs him in a wave of affection that leaves him wondering how he spent so long not knowing her.

It’s why Farkle seeks out the bench after a dinner with Isadora and his parents, feeling jittery and confused and needing to see the one person he knows won’t- _can’t_ \- lie to him.

Sure enough, Riley’s sat on her side of the bench, swinging her legs absentmindedly as she watches a pair of birds in a nearby tree. She turns as she hears him approach.

“Hey Farkle!” she chirps, until she takes in his stiff shoulders, his bitten lip, and her voice shifts to concerned in an instant. “Are you all right?”

“Who am I?” he asks instead of replying, because he needs to know what she thinks, how much of a person she sees him as.

“You’re Farkle,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Yeah, but who is that? People keep saying I’m Farkle like it’s a whole personality and that’s all they say I am, so please, Riley, I need you to tell me what you mean by that.”

“I mean you’re _Farkle_. My best friend who’s clever and kind and makes me smile no matter what because I know how much he cares.” She holds her hand out and he finally moves to sit next to her, allowing Riley to link her arm through him. “What’s this about?”

“I was having dinner with Isadora and my parents when my mother started saying how she always knew that we’d be a good match because we’d both always been scientific geniuses and Isadora agreed and said that we always would be and I- it’s like everyone’s decided that all I am is just this one narrow characteristic. Just- is it selfish, to want to be something more?”

“No,” Riley tells him, and with her cheek pressed against his shoulder he knows she’s telling the truth. “It’s human.”

“In order for a living organism to thrive, it needs to be allowed to grow,” he says softly. “Would you still care about me even if I grew into someone different?”

Riley smiles gently and squeezes his arm. “Of course I would. Whoever you are now, whoever you grow into- that’s a part of you, and that makes it worth caring about.”

Farkle leans his head against hers. They sit in silence for a minute, neither wanting to break the peace of the moment.

“Do you ever worry that the relationships we’re in are stopping us from reaching our full potential?”

Riley draws back from Farkle, as startled as he is. He hadn’t even realised that this was a worry until he said it out loud.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean-” _oh God, what does he mean_ \- “It’s like how you and Lucas always have the same opinion about everything. It’s nice and it’s comfortable but you never push each other to be anything different. You just stay in the same little box, just like I have with Isadora, and- don’t you wonder if that means giving up on everything you could be?”

Riley is silent beside him. When she speaks, her voice is impossibly tight. “You don’t get to decide how I feel.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Yeah, we agree about most things and maybe some people think that we’re boring, or _don’t challenge each other_ , but that doesn’t mean that we don’t care about each other or that we should give up on our relationship.”

“Why are you so upset by this? I’m just trying to understand-”

“Because we’re getting married next week!”

Riley’s shout jolts Farkle out of his confusion. She inhales deeply, releases a shuddering breath.

“My wedding to Lucas got moved forward to next week,” she says quietly. “That’s what I came here to tell you.”

One of the things he’s come to like most about Riley is her unfailing optimism, how she always seems bursting with a happiness she wants to share with the rest of the world. There’s no trace of it on her face, eyes still fixed on the ground.

“Is that good?” he asks carefully.

“Yeah.” Riley nods. “I mean that was sort of the point of getting engaged. And I know that Lucas cares about me.” She turns to look him in the eyes. “I believe there’s good in everything if you look for it. And with Lucas- I didn’t have to. It’s always been there.”

“You must really love him.”

“Yeah, I do. I feel the same way for him as you do for Isadora.”

And how does he feel about Isadora? Farkle realises, suddenly, that as good a scientist he claims to be, he never asked himself that question. He thinks about how he feels around her, and without meaning to thinks about his feelings around Riley, the intensity of them, until all he feels is confusion and an odd sense of guilt.

“I don’t know what I feel for Isadora,” he murmurs, but Riley hears him anyway. “I care about her but- it’s not the same as when I’m with you. It- It’s stronger with you.”

Riley hesitates, then softly places her hand on his arm. “I get what you mean. I feel different with you than I do with Lucas.”

On impulse he leans in to kiss her.

“What are you doing?” Her hand is on his chest, holding him back, but she doesn’t seem angry. Just lost. “We’re not- we can’t do this.”

“You said your feelings around me were different,” he says quietly. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

“Different doesn’t always mean better,” she tells him. “And I made a promise to Lucas, and to my family, and I’m happy with him, so it doesn’t matter what kind of feelings we have for each other or if I’ll stay the same way from now on, I’m not going to throw that away over a conversation about whether or not I’m gonna grow as a person.”

She stands up and starts to walk away. Farkle stands as well, reaching out to grab her arm, and she turns to face him.

“Are you really gonna marry him?” he asks, one final desperate attempt to prove to himself, to her, that they have something that would make the heartache worthwhile.

She’s crying without realising, but beneath the film of tears in her eyes is the determination he fell in love with. “Yeah, I am.”

And she does.


	4. Titanic au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i'm going to write a 5+1 fic  
> also me: writes chapter 4 first

Farkle had never really thought, beyond staring down at maps in the back of a classroom, quite how large the world was outside London. London is always loud and always busy and so Farkle has never felt the need to seek out life anywhere else. To him, even Birmingham feels unimaginably far away.

But this had all changed with the announcement of the titanic. Suddenly the world feels possible and he jumps at the opportunity his father is offered to travel on its first voyage. Not a month later, he is standing upon its decks, waving excitedly back at the crowds of people on the decks who grow smaller and less distinct with each passing second.

He seeks out the engine room, spends the afternoon lost in the machinery that keeps the ship going. The hum of cogs is comforting, floating hundreds of miles away from the land Farkle has never left. He emerges, hours later, to find the deck empty and quiet, the sky purpled and dotted with faint pinpricks of stars. He’s never seen stars before, not with the London smog that covers everything in a suffocating blanket.

He rounds the corner of the building and is confronted suddenly by the sight of a girl standing on the railings that encircle the deck of the ship, face upturned towards the sky and hair gently wafting round her face.

She’s so caught up in her daydreams that she doesn’t hear Farkle approach, doesn’t notice him until she loses her footing on the railing and suddenly slips forward, until Farkle darts forward to catch her elbow and pull her back onto the deck.

She blinks a couple of times, looking into Farkle’s eyes with the shock of the fall evident on her face.

“I wasn’t stalking you or anything,” he blurts without thinking, which rather than helping his case only makes him sound like more of a creep. “I’m-uh- I’m Farkle, by the way,” he adds, because that’s what normal humans do when meeting someone for the first time.

“Riley,” she tells him, moving her elbow from where she’s still holding it and shaking out the skirt of her dress. “Thanks for catching me. It’s nice to go one evening without falling over.”

“I don’t think standing on a wet railing helps much,” he jokes tentatively, relaxing as she lets out a laugh.

“It’s the best place to watch the stars,” she tells him seriously, turning to look up at sky. “It makes me feel like part of the sky when I stand on the railing.” And from anyone else that would sound pretentious and an overly-rehearsed cliché, but coming from this girl he barely knows but already feels so drawn to, looking back into her open eyes and seeing absolute conviction there, it sounds like poetry. He could hear her speak all day and never grow tired of the sound of her voice.

“We should probably think about heading in,” he finally says, breaking the comfortable silence that had grown as they stared up into the sky, side by side. “I think everyone’s going to bed.”

Farkle begins to turn away, walks a couple of steps before he realises that Riley hasn’t moved. “Riley?”

She turns back to him, still smiling. “I’ll leave in a minute. Just want to stay out here a bit longer.”

*

Riley must have gone inside at some point, but when Farkle seeks out the same deck space the next evening he finds her in exactly the same place. She turns around as she hears him approach, a soft smile on her face.

“You came back.”

“I came back,” he agrees, leaning back against the railing. “Thought I’d see what about these stars makes you love them so much.”

*

They settle into a comfortable routine, meeting each other behind the engine room just as the stars emerge. They spend peaceful hours under the starlight and Farkle learns that Riley still keeps a battered teddy bear her younger brother mauled by the side of her bed, that when she takes photographs with the camera her Uncle Shawn gave her, she gives them to her best friend to turn into drawings. He tells about the picture of an atom he has pasted on his bedroom wall, confesses that sometimes a sheet of formulas is the only way to cope with the chaos and noise of the world.

One day when their hands brush he leaves his there, stares up at the constellations as Riley lets him hold the back of his hand against her own for a minute before moving to lace their fingers together. It feels safe.

*

It doesn’t last. The story of the Titanic has never been one that promises a happy ending.

When the iceberg hits, they are lounging on chairs on the deck, Riley’s head leaning on Farkle’s shoulder as the music of the band washes over them from below.

( _If we had been by the railing as usual_ , Farkle thinks to himself, when all that exists in the world is him and the ice in his bones, _would we have been able to prevent this?_ )

There is a crunching noise that dominates the music and then nothing but an awful silence. Farkle is suddenly made painfully aware of the sound of his heartbeat in his ears.

And then there is an awful, unrelenting creaking noise as the boat tilts and throws them off their chairs. From below the decks, an alarm begins to sound.

“We need to get off the boat.” Riley breathes and Farkle only resists the urge to snap _“Really? Because I thought a bit of swimming sounded lovely”_ because her eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them and her hands are shaking and all he can think about is stopping her from looking like that.

“We need to find our families,” he says instead. With silent understanding they dart down a set of stairs and split, each heading towards the hope of their family and some sort of reassurance.

Farkle hasn’t gone more than twenty metres before a man grabs his arm, tells him that they’re attempting to remove the water and begin the evacuations, and how can Farkle do anything but abandon his plans and follow the man? (Seriously, how can he? All he wants to do is find his father and return to the safety of Riley).

He sees Riley again as she approaches the lifeboats, trailing a small suitcase and a younger brother behind her. She shouts his name, drops all she is carrying to throw her arms around his neck.

“You have to get on the lifeboat,” he tells her, wanting nothing more than to hold onto her for as long as he’s got left, and she pulls away, staring up at him with barely-disguised horror in her eyes.

“I’m not going without you.”

“You have to.”

“I can- I can stay here! And help you get everyone else into the lifeboats, Farkle, I can help!”

“I know you can help, but right now the best thing you can do is get your brother off this ship and reassure the people already in the lifeboats.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” she pleads, and her fingers are between his own and it’s killing him to let go.

“I’ll always come back to you,” he promises.

(He breaks this promise, as perhaps he always knew he would.

Riley’s fingers slip out of his own. She collects her brother and her battered suitcase and they clamber into a lifeboat, drift slowly into the Arctic waters.

He stands and directs people into lifeboats until there are no lifeboats left and then he shovels waist-deep water out of the hull with all the determination of the dying man that he is.

Eventually there is nothing to do but clamber back up to the deck, where the ship splits clean in half, tilting back and sinking into the ocean.

Farkle sits on the floor, grips the railings where he meets (met) Riley every night and stares up at the stars as the ships steadily drops into the freezing waters below, her explanations of the constellations still in his ears.

The band is still playing.)


	5. Girl Meets 1961

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like in the show, Rosie = Riley, Ginsburg = Farkle, May = Maya and Merlin = Lucas
> 
> All dialogue comes from the show

She catches his eye as soon as she enters. He’s heard of girls like her, girls who float through life seeing everything and nothing at the same time.

(Perhaps he knows there is no future for them as soon as he sees the blonde girl enter, as soon as she takes to the stage and Rosie stares at her with open adoration in her eyes. Perhaps he knows, but he does not stop falling, because he is foolish and over-emotional and clinging to hope he never wants to lose.)

So he talks with her over the bar, flirts a bit, They both collect memories, hers a mass of words, his blurred and faded snapshots of life. “Maybe one day we’ll swap memories,” she jokes and he feels himself fall in love with the idea of what if, just a little bit.

(And doesn’t part of his heart break when Rosie stares up at May, because he’s been doing this for long enough to know when people don’t plan on sticking around and this girl- she’s afraid to leave any mark on the world at all.)

Rosie stops laughing suddenly, goofy demeanour dropping away as she catches his eyes in a piercing gaze.

“I know this is weird, but have we met before?” she asks, completely serious. Her pen is still in her hand, absentmindedly tapping against the open notebook, and Ginsburg knows without asking that she will write down whatever he answers, will craft him a space in her expanding legacy.

“Haven’t we all?” he replies, deliberately light and uncaring, because it is so much easier to act the part of the aloof barman than to admit that _yes, he thinks so, they must do because how else could he explain how comforting he finds her presence or how clearly he can picture the way her nose crinkles when she’s frustrated and the shape of her smile when she talks with someone she loves or how he knows, instinctively, that she feels the same hum of attraction in every nerve and bone of her body_. It feels as if the world has been spinning out of control his entire life, and that this moment with her is the first time it’s stopped long enough for him to breathe, and that is too much, too complex for the diary of a girl he’s only just met.

Rosie smiles at him, like she’s just made sense of him, and he squashes down the guilt trapped in his throat and smiles back.

*

He never gets another chance to talk to her properly, not like they were at the bar.

(And he will always wonder what could have happened if he had been honest earlier, if May and her half-hidden amusement and aching vulnerability had chosen a table with only one chair.)

Instead he wipes down the bar and fixes drinks for other, far less interesting customers and tries not to think so much about her. It’s hard, though, when Rosie’s still so close, close enough that he catches snippets of her conversation with May.

“Are you as interesting as you look?” Ginsburg hears her ask, as earnest as earlier, and although he can’t see her face, he knows that she’s looking at May just as deeply as she looked at him. He can see May though, watches the amusement flicker over her face and thinks a bit of May just fell in love with Rosie too.

*

May sings, and she shines, and Ginsburg knows in that moment that he’s lost any chance of being something with Rosie.

The cowboy, the only patron Ginsburg’s never really learnt much about, takes to the stage, and although Rosie’s awe-struck smile never leaves her face, it grows imperceptibly wider each time her eyes drift back to May’s face.

The cowboy ( _Merlin_ , he reminds himself) sits himself down next to May, compliments her song, and it seems like a good enough excuse for Ginsburg to follow.

“And what do you do?” Merlin asks Rosie, very kindly ignoring just how hard she’s trying to maintain her _cool adult_ persona.

“She’s an observer of humanity,” May tells him, and Ginsburg’s been talking to lonely people long enough to hear the hesitancy in her voice, how desperately she wants to live up to Rosie’s ever-growing idolisation. Rosie looks at her like she’s a promise, or a dream she’s yet to have, and he wonders if she’s been observing humanity long enough to see the scared little girl underneath.

“The observer, the singer and the mystery man,” he says, and looking at Merlin’s relaxed profile, at May’s fingers around the neck of her guitar, at Rosie’s open notebook and open expression, he suddenly feels like he understands his sudden connection to Rosie at the bar, because he can feel the same connection to the others. It feels like something in the universe has shifted infinitesimally and suddenly everything is as it should be, like the four of them were always meant to be together.

He’s snapped a picture before he’s even aware that he’s moved.

“That’s gotta be worth something to somebody someday,” he explains, and is surprised to find that it’s the truth.

He heads back to the bar and watches their group split apart again, because he seems to be the only person who felt something to suggest they were anything other than a group of strangers having a chance conversation in New York.

Merlin leaves first (and Ginsburg was so sure that May was the one who didn’t plan on sticking around), and his parting words are enough to bring the insecurity back to the curve of May’s spine, her half-hearted mirroring of Rosie’s excited expression.

She stands up suddenly, pushing her guitar towards Rosie.

“Why are you giving me this? You were great,” Rosie says.

May shakes her head. She doesn’t sound sad when she speaks, just resigned.

“He’s gonna change the world. I’m not gonna change a thing,” she says simply, and how wrong she is, to think that she hasn’t changed Rosie’s world, still murmuring _Topanga_ to herself when she eventually leaves.

The café feels very quiet and very small, once she’s left, and Ginsburg takes that as a sign to step away from the camera.

He thinks, in between making coffee and cleaning tables, that he may have captured something special in that photograph. He feels an unexplainable pull towards these three near-strangers, even stronger towards the wide-eyed girl collecting memories in her notebook.

She is gone, a fantasy that burned bright and vanished, off chasing her own dream of blonde hair and flower decorated guitars.


	6. Atoms Collide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I should write all the chapters before posting so I don't feel loads of pressure to get them written  
> Also me: writes the last chapter first

The last time Farkle falls in love with Riley, he is six years old and saves her from accidently drowning in a bowl of water. He falls in love with Maya at the exact same time, the fiery girl with the long blonde hair. He will love them both with every fibre of his being until he is twelve, and then he will continue to love Maya just the same as before and will begin to love Riley just as fiercely as something else.

There is no singular point at which Farkle can say his feelings for Riley began to change direction. There are just days when Riley will laugh, and Farkle will think that it is his favourite sound in the world, or Riley will give one of her smiles that lights up not just the room but the whole of Farkle’s world, and he realises that he will do anything he can to make sure that she never loses that smile.

At first he doesn’t realise that his feelings have changed. Riley falls for sensible, dependable Lucas and then is pulled into a triangle that seems to suck the life out of everyone involved, whilst Farkle follows the connection with Smackle they’d always ignored for the sake of competition.

It doesn’t last.

Riley and Lucas become closer than ever, then grow further and further apart until they can hardly see one another, Lucas the bright sun everybody sees him as and Riley the Pluto she loves so much. Farkle and Smackle fall out of love in the same simple way they slipped in, and although they end things nothing about their relationship really changes.

The only major difference Farkle can see is that the feelings he had assumed were merely friendly are very much not. Every time Riley pulls her best (adorable) evil face or tells him something else about the vibrant world she keeps inside her head, he feels a little piece of himself fall further in love with her.

He doesn’t say anything to her, of course. He’s seen this trope enough in Hollywood rom-coms to know that “Hey! I’m madly in love with you and think that we should run off into the sunset together!” is more likely to result in a restraining order than a date.

But he’s also seen the overly-romantic best friend who won’t take no for an answer, so instead he hides the feelings as best as he can and settles for orbiting Riley like her own personal Pluto, feels insignificant compared to the brightest star in the galaxy.

They hang out together more often as they get older. Riley fell in love with the planetarium in Farkle’s ceiling the moment she saw it and drops in to gaze at it at will. She spends almost as much time searching for constellations on that ceiling as she does in her bay window, so much so that Farkle has begun to feel a strange sort of comfort in coming home to see her lying in the middle of his bedroom floor, her hair fanned out behind her head. He joins her most days, their ankles and elbows touching as he names every star on his sky and she weaves her own stories behind them. Sometimes he turns and watches Riley instead, the light in her eyes, the turn of her mouth, the way her hands move and trace the galaxies.

On their best days they take the elevator up to the roof and stargaze for real on the deckchairs Farkle moved up there six months ago, buried under old blankets from her father’s old treehouse. Things seem different under the real sky, more personal as they whisper stories to one another under the sound of New York traffic.

“I think I might be in love with you,” Farkle says one day. “I hope that’s all right with you.”

He’s alone on the rooftop, a blanket pulled around his shoulders as he watches purple bleed into the setting sky. He twists his phone in his lap absentmindedly. Even without Riley here the roof feels disconnected from the rest of the universe, as though anything he dares to say will be swallowed up by the sky.

“How’s that for a love confession?” he jokes, looking into the stars as though Riley is among them. “It’s probably the only thing I haven’t told you on this rooftop. Apart from maybe how much you matter to me. Because that’s something I do need to tell you- how much I like having you in my life. I love knowing that you’re always there to support me no matter what I do, or what I discover about myself, because we’re friends first and it- it makes me happy, to know we’re always gonna have that, even if I never have the courage to tell you in person. I mean, I’m a scientist, Riley, you know that. I like getting the facts and seeing the real, tangible evidence of something before I believe in it. But you- the way I feel about you- it’s not something I’ve ever been able to understand. There’s no real evidence for why you make me feel this way, and usually I find not knowing something so frustrating, but it’s never felt that way with you. Me not getting it makes it feel kinda special instead.” He lets out a small laugh. “Can you tell I’ve been thinking about this a lot?”

“Yeah, you can.”

The voice startles Farkle out of his seat. Riley stands in the doorway to the rooftop, her phone held against her ear. She lowers the phone and gives him a half-smile.

“You kinda butt-dialled me just before you started making your big speech- which I thought was pretty cool by the way. Liked it a lot.”

Farkle officially hates technology. He barely resists the urge to hurl his phone into the New York traffic in some kind of mild revenge for quite possibly ruining his life.

“I- uh-“ he begins and what’s the point? She’s heard it all already and Farkle knows, no matter what he tells her, Riley will never hold it against him. “Yeah,” he tries again. “I liked it too.”

Riley grins and a relieved laugh escapes his lips, and with it the tension between them dissipates.

“Do you mean it?”

There’s an anxious edge to her smile, her left hand coming up to fiddle with the edge of her jacket.

“I’ve always meant it.”

And doesn’t that sound like a line from one of those rom-coms he was trying so desperately not to copy, but for the first time Farkle has hope that he might be more than the comic relief or nerdy best friend.

The nerves drop out of Riley’s smile, replaced with the sunshine he’s always loved so much. “That’s good,” she tells him, taking a step forward. “I would hate it if you didn’t feel the same, especially cause I think we might owe Maya five bucks now.”

And like the pull of two oppositely charged magnets, their lips move closer, press together. Riley feels galaxies for under her fingertips where her hands have found a home around Farkle’s neck. It feels as though everything has led up to this moment, so insignificant compared to the age and scope of the universe they both love so much. And when Farkle pulls back and presses their foreheads together, when Riley whispers “I love you, Farkle,” the words like a shout in the quiet universe that includes only these two, they think that this final collision of atoms has enough force to create a supernova.


End file.
